“Like what?” I said, genuinely puzzled.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t help thinking that it might be some kind of setup?”
“What?”
“Or that you might want to use me as a kind of cat’s paw, just to see what happens?”
“Brian,” I said.
“It’s the sort of thing that naturally occurs to one, isn’t it?” he said.
“Not to me,” I said, and because I could think of nothing more compelling, I added, “You’re my brother.”
“Yes,” he said. “On the other side, there is that.” He frowned, and for a moment I was terrified that he would pick up the sugar packet again. But instead, he shook his head, as if overcoming a large temptation, and looked me in the eye. For a long moment he simply stared, and I stared back. Then his face lit up with his terrible fake smile. “I would be delighted to help you,” he said.
I exhaled a very large cloud of anxiety, and inhaled even more relief. “Thank you,” I said.
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE LAW OFFICES OF FIGUEROA, WHITLEY AND FLEISCHMAN were on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise building on Brickell Avenue, just on the edge of the area where office space starts to get pricey. The lobby was deserted when I walked in at two fifteen, and as I stood next to the elevator and scanned the building’s directory, I noticed that very few of the floors had any tenants at all. Like many of the newer buildings in Miami’s cluttered skyline, this one had apparently been built during the wild optimism of the last real estate boom, when everyone was certain prices would keep going up forever. Instead, prices had collapsed like a punctured balloon, and half of the glittering new buildings in downtown Miami had turned into shiny and very overpriced ghost towns.
Rita was not in the waiting room when I stepped off the elevator, so I sat down and thumbed through a copy of GOLF magazine. There were several articles on improving my short game that would have been much more interesting if only I played golf. The large golden clock on the wall said it was exactly two thirty-six when the elevator doors slid open and Rita stepped out. “Oh, Dexter, you’re here already,” she said.
I never really know what to say to that kind of painfully obvious remark, even though it seems to be very popular, so I just admitted that I was, in fact, right here in front of her, and she nodded and hustled over to the receptionist. “We have an appointment with Larry Fleischman?” she announced breathily.
The receptionist, a cool, stylish woman of around thirty, cocked her head at the appointment book and nodded. “Mrs. Morgan?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Rita said, and the receptionist smiled and dialed a number on the phone on her desk.
“Mr. and Mrs. Morgan,” she said into the phone, and a few moments later we were ushered into an office halfway down the hall, where a serious-looking man of about fifty with badly dyed black hair sat behind a large wooden desk. He looked up as we entered, and then stood and held out his hand.
“Larry Fleischman—you must be Rita,” he said, taking her hand and staring deep into her eyes with well-practiced and totally fake sincerity. “Carlene has told me so much about you.” His eyes flicked down to the front of her blouse and Rita blushed and gently tried to disengage her hand. Larry looked up at her face and reluctantly dropped her hand at last, and then he turned to me. “And, uh … Derrick?” he said to me, holding out his hand just far enough away that I had to lean over to shake it.
“Dexter,” I said. “With an ‘X.’ ”
“Huh,” he said thoughtfully. “Unusual name.”
“Almost bizarre,” I said, and then, just to keep things on an even footing, I added, “And you must be Leroy Fleischman?”
He blinked and dropped my hand. “Larry,” he said. “It’s Larry Fleischman.”
“Sorry,” I said, and for a moment we just looked at each other.
Finally, Larry cleared his throat and looked back at Rita. “Well,” he said, frowning. “Sit down, won’t you?”
We sat facing the desk in matching chairs, battered wooden things with worn fabric seats, and Larry sat back down behind his desk and opened a manila folder. It had only one sheet of paper in it, and he picked that up and frowned at it. “Well,” he said. “What seems to be the problem?”
Our problem was apparently not written on the paper, and I wondered whether there was anything written on it at all, or if it was just a prop for Larry’s I-am-a-real-lawyer act, and the folder was as phony as his hair color. To be honest, I was beginning to wonder whether Larry could possibly be any help at all. If I was going to fight off a determined and dishonest attack by Hood and Doakes, I needed an attack dog, a lawyer who was sharp and eager and very aggressive and ready to snap the leash and maul that vile old whore, Justice. Instead I was looking at a middle-aged poser who clearly didn’t like me, and would probably decide to help them throw me in the slammer so he could hit on my wife.
But we were here, after all, and Rita seemed to be impressed. So I sat and let her burble her way through our tale of woe. Larry stared at her and nodded, occasionally tearing his eyes off her cleavage and looking over at me with an expression of dull surprise.
When Rita finally finished, Larry leaned back in his chair and pursed his lips. “Well,” he said. “First of all, I want to reassure you that you’ve done exactly the right thing by coming here to consult me.” He smiled at Rita. “Too many people wait to consult an attorney until things have gone too far for me to be really helpful. Which you haven’t done, in this case.” He seemed to like the sound of that, and he nodded a few times in the direction of Rita’s breasts. “The important thing,” he told them, “is to have some good legal advice at the very beginning of this thing. Even if you are innocent,” he said, turning to look at me with an expression that said he didn’t really think I was. Then he turned back to Rita and gave her a condescending smile. “The American legal system is the finest in the world,” he told her, which didn’t seem remotely possible, since he was part of it. But he said it with a straight face and went on. “However, it is an adversary system, which means that it’s the prosecutor’s job to get a conviction any way he can, and it’s my job to stop him and keep your husband out of jail.” He looked at me again, as if he was wondering whether that was such a good idea after all.
“Yes, I know,” Rita said, and Larry snapped his head back around and looked at her attentively. “I mean, that’s exactly— And I don’t even know … Have you had, you know. A lot of experience? With, um, this kind of … I mean, we understand that criminal law and corporate law are very much— And Carlene said, your sister-in-law? So it might be important.”
Larry nodded at Rita as if everything she’d said made sense, which was one more clue that he wasn’t actually listening. “Yes,” he said, “that’s an important consideration. And I want you to know that I will leave no stone unturned and do absolutely everything in my power to help you beat this thing. But,” he said, showing her the palms of his hands and smiling confidently, “that will take some work. And you need to know that it may turn out to be expensive.” He glanced at me again, then back to Rita. “Not that you can really put a price on freedom.”
I was pretty sure that, in fact, Larry could and would put a price on freedom, and it would turn out to be exactly ten dollars more than we had in the bank. But before I could think of a diplomatic way to tell him that I would rather spend twenty years in the penitentiary than ten more minutes in his company, Rita began to reassure him that she understood completely and money was no object, because Dexter, that is, her husband, and anyway, so that was fine and we were very grateful. And Larry smiled and nodded thoughtfully at Rita’s breasts until she finally ran out of oxygen and blathered to a gasping halt. And as she paused to inhale he stood up behind his desk and held out his hand.